Savannah to bolster security at St. Patrick's Day parade, citing New Orleans truck attack in January

Caption

Savannah's St. Patrick's Day parade, seen here in 2023, traditionally passes by the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist.

Credit: Benjamin Payne / GPB News

Public safety officials in Savannah have announced new security measures for the city's upcoming St. Patrick's Day parade, including the installation of water-filled barricades and a sweep for explosive devices in advance of the event, which routinely draws tens of thousands of visitors downtown.

Savannah Assistant Police Chief Rob Gavin said at a Tuesday news conference in Johnson Square that crews will set up the new barricades and other protective infrastructure "at key intersections and on sidewalks around the parade route to ensure that vehicle-borne attacks, such as [what] we saw in New Orleans, are not a concern during our parade."

Gavin was referring to the early-morning New Year's Day attack in New Orleans in which a man plowed a pickup truck through Bourbon Street, killing 14 people and wounding dozens of others.

There are currently "no credible threats," Gavin said, to either the parade in downtown Savannah on Monday, March 17, or to its preceding weekend festivities, according to threat assessments by the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Even so, said Savannah City Manager Jay Melder, "With the ever-evolving landscape of public safety, especially around big festivities and big public events, we have to stay as far ahead of that as we can — and so, we're planning things differently."

The enhanced measures will include a comprehensive sweep conducted by the Savannah Police Department's Explosive Ordnance Device team and other law enforcement agencies for any potential "nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as explosive devices," Gavin said.

Gavin urged paradegoers and weekend revelers to remain vigilant, cautioning that the new barricades are "not a failsafe. Nothing is going to positively stop a vehicle — even the multi-million-dollar systems you can put in roads. Everything's got a failure point."

Instead, he said, the new setup will "be there to slow things down" in the event of an attempted vehicle attack. "It's there to slow it down enough for us to be able to take some form of action."

Water barricades were chosen in part because of their greater mobility compared to concrete barriers, he added, allowing police "to get them out of the way quickly if we need to."

They will be installed on the evening of Friday, March 14, remaining up for the entirety of the St. Patrick's Day weekend and Monday parade, before being taken down Tuesday morning.

In addition to lining the perimeter of the parade route, the water barricades will be erected along some other busy stretches of downtown, including on ramps leading down to the tourism hotspot of River Street as well as entrances to the City Market pedestrian mall.

Savannah's parade — which marked its bicentennial last year — is one of the most widely attended St. Patrick's Day celebrations in the U.S., owing to the Hostess City's rich Irish history and its status as a tourist destination.